These
days many Japanese companies are trying to adjust to a more international
business environment. Rakuten has decided that everybody in the company will
have to be able to speak English. In the coming years Asia will become more and
more important as Japanese companies open branches in Asian companies and will
have to deal with different Asian societies and business cultures.
The
question is of course how important is it to be international? If you work with
people from different backgrounds and different languages the chance of
mistakes grows. Most managers don't think this is a big problem though. The
general idea seems to be: What is the worst that could happen??
This is
what the Austrian emperor Joseph II thought in 1788.The Austrian Empire was at
war with the Turkish Empire. The emperor decided to send a big army south to
finish the war. This army was made up from many different nationalities:
Austrian German, Romanian, Hungarians, Slovenians and so on. As was the habit
they all wore different uniforms and spoke different languages. Just like in a
big international company they weren't used to working together as a team.
Emperor Joseph II didn't think this was a big problem. At the battle of
Karansebes he found out he was wrong.
The
Austrian army was waiting for the Turkish army near a town called Karansebes.
At one point some Romanian soldiers bought Schnapps (German style vodka) from
local people and started getting drunk. A group of Slovenian soldiers wanted
some of the wine and a small fight erupted between the two groups. After a
little while an officer ordered his German soldiers on horseback to stop the
fight between the two groups. They rode towards the fight while screaming them
to stop. Unfortunately stop in German is Halt, and halt sounds a lot like
Allah. The Romanian soldiers thought the Turkish army had arrived and started
shooting. First the Germans were very surprised, but that soon turned to anger.
Every European can tell you that making Germans angry is a very very very bad
idea. They chased the Romanian soldiers through the camp. An Austrian officer
saw the Germans attack. He didn't know what was happening so he ordered his men
to shoot them. From there on people panicked and everybody started shooting
anybody in a different uniform. Final result was about 10.000 people killed and
wounded. The Austrian army went back home. A few days later the Turkish army
arrived to find a lot of dead Romanians, Germans and so on. They were of course
surprised but decided they had won the battle of Karansebes and went home in a
very good mood.
The
battle of Karansebes sounds like something you can see in a bad comedy movie,
but it really happened. It is an extreme example of what can go wrong when
people misunderstand each other. Of course in business lives are not at stake,
but you can imagine how one small misunderstanding can cost you a lot of money.
There are two important things to learn. First, do not underestimate how many
things can go wrong when dealing with different languages. In a later blog post
I will tell about some personal mistakes I made. Second, never drink Schnapps.
It will end badly for you. I speak from personal experience here.
